Deng Xiaoping: Interpreter of the Chinese Dream

1.       Courtesy The Equator Line, vol. 3 April-June 2014 pp. 40-49

In 1976, with the demise of Mao Zedong, the curtains on the ‘Great Proletariat Revolution’ were also brought down. The people who were purged and imprisoned started to walk out of the prisons. Three men, who were walking out of the jail’s gate, enquired about the reasons why they were incarcerated. The first said: “I have been imprisoned for supporting Deng Xiaoping.” The second replied: “It’s ridiculous! I have been framed for attacking Deng Xiaoping!” The duo then turned and asked the third: “What about you?” The third man replied: “I am Deng Xiaoping.” This may be a political satire, but demonstrates the realities of the Chinese politics during Mao’s times, and the man who withstood all these tumultuous times, and not only emerged victorious but also de-Maoised China was none other than the architect of modern China, Deng Xiaoping!  

Most authoritative works on Deng such as Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2013) by Harvard sociologist Ezra F. Vogel; Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China (1997) by British ambassador to China, Richard Evan, and Deng: A Political Biography (1998) by Benjamin Yang, a Harvard trained professor of People’s University, Beijing; My Father Deng Xiaoping: ‘Cultural Revolution’ Years 《我的父亲邓小平：“文革”岁月》by his daughter Deng Rong (2000) and An Autobiography of Deng Xiaoping 《邓小平自述》published in 2009 have tried to reconstruct the personality and character of Deng, however, most of these except the last one are loaded with post 1977 Deng construct and give very little account of Deng during the Mao years. The autobiography throws some light on his Childhood and formative years in France and Moscow. Deng Xixian (the original name of Deng Xiaoping) was born in Paifang Village in Xiexing township, Guang'an County of Sichuan in 1904. According to Deng Xioping’s brother Deng Ken, ‘their father was a petty landlord with around 6 hectares of land. Deng was eldest of three brothers. Besides they have two sisters. After their mother’s demise in 1924, their father remarried a widow called Xia Bogen. Their step mother was very hard working and treated the kids very well. Deng went to a traditional school at the age of five and passed out middle school from the native county. In 1919, he was selected to be part of a work-study program to go to France and got enrolled in Chongqing Preparatory School. These were the turbulent times in China under the warlords; the May 4^th Movement of the Peking University students had attracted young people from across the country. Deng had also participated in the sloganeering and boycott of the Japanese goods, even though their father was old fashioned and represented the old society but never stopped his sons to join the revolution.’   

In the summer of 1920, upon graduating from the Chongqing Preparatory School, Deng, a young boy of 16 along with 80 of his schoolmates boarded a ship for France and landed in Marseilles in October. As the economic condition of his family back home was deteriorating, and money wasn’t forthcoming, he had to do odd jobs while pursuing his studies. Even here French workers were preferred over the Chinese, and discriminated in terms of wages according to Deng’s own diaries. Thanks to Zhou Enlai and others who were also studying in France and were indoctrinated into Marxist thought, Deng also joined the group and started to study Marxism.  In 1922 Deng joined the Communist Party of Chinese Youth in Europe, and two years later Communist Party of China (CPC). Deng’s five year stay in France, was indeed a decent beginning of his revolutionary career, he Co-edited a magazine called ‘Red Light’ and contributed articles. In the aftermath of October Revolution, as Soviet Union was supporting communist movements across the world, many young students were drawn to Soviet Union. Moreover, Sun Yat-sen himself has turned towards Soviet Union for help, which has resulted in the First United Front between the CPC and the Kuomintang (KMT) in the 1920s. Deng was no exception and left France for Moscow in 1926. He initially registered as a student in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, but soon after transferred to the Sun Yat-sen University, where Feng Funeng, the eldest daughter of Feng Yuxiang,  and Chiang Chingkuo, the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek were also studying. 

While in Sun Yat-sen University, Deng recalls that his family had great hopes on him. ‘They wanted me to fulfil their dreams of becoming an official and turn around the fortunes of the family. They wanted me to get married and settle down early in life, and also decided to get me married to a daughter of Tang family. They believed in the Confucian adage of ‘not having a progeny is one of the biggest filial sins.’ However, I was having different thoughts about marriage while in France and Russia. ‘I thought that an illiterate girl would certainly be an impediment rather than an advantage in my revolutionary work. I started to believe in ‘love marriage’ and wrote to my parents about it. I was severely scolded by my father as a rebel, un- filial and warned that if I did not mend my ways I would be ostracised by the family. I chose to be ostracised.’

In 1926, after a year’s stay in Sun Yat-sen University, Deng was sent by the Communist International to China to assist the army of Feng Yuxiang, commander of national army in Northwest China. Deng reached China in the spring of 1927 as Chief of the Political Section as well as Secretary of the Communist Party organization at the Sun-Yat-sen Military and political Academy in Xi’an, a time when the CPC-KMT coalition has crumbled, and the KMT had started to purge the communists. Under such circumstances Deng left for Hankou where the situation was even worse. The communists were forced to go underground, and Deng Xixian took the name of Deng Xiaoping to avoid white terror. In 1929 Deng joined Li Mingrui, General Commander of the Seventh and Eighth Armies in the capacity of Political Commissar to launch uprisings against the KMT government. In fact these armies were built under the guidance of Deng, which were successful in establishing Youjiang etc. revolutionary bases. In the base areas, the land was confiscated from the landlords and distributed amongst the peasants. According to Deng he also has a close shave with life during Guangxi White Uprising when he was attacked by the armed bandits and at the point of knife robbed him of 20 silver dollars.’ 

Deng and 7^th Army were also victims of the ‘Li Lisan line’- the communists should take to the big cities first – the line proved fatal as the uprisings were crushed mercilessly by the KMT army. Deng opposed the line and joined the Jiangxi revolutionary base in 1931. Deng in fact was subscribing to Mao’s line that called for ‘encircling cities from the countryside’ against dictates of the then CPC leadership influenced by the Comintern representative in China, Otto Braun, and a pro-Soviet faction trained in Moscow that included Wang Ming and others. The Comintern line suffered a heavy blow in October 1934, when the fifth campaign against ‘encirclement and suppression’ failed and the Red Army was forced to retreat to countryside what in history is known as the Long March. The factionalism within the CPC came out in open during Zunyi Conference in 1935 where Mao lambasted the military strategy of the CPC and propounded his own line that was supported by Moscow trained Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, albeit Deng was just there in the capacity of secretary of the Central Committee. Zunyi conference could be said as the fist stepping stone in Mao Zedong’s long march for power, and also Deng’s albeit he remained in smaller positions during CPC’s retreat in Shaanxi. 

During the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-45) when Red Army was reorganized into Eighth Route Army, Deng Xiaoping took charge of the Political Commissar of the 129th Division under Liu Bocheng. Following this, Deng with Liu lead various campaigns in Shanxi-Hebei-Henan border area and established anti-Japanese bases. Deng’s first major military victory could be the annihilation of KMT’s 97th Army in March 1940, albeit the offensive was also supported by Shanxi-Qahar-Hebei Military Command. Deng and Liu also engaged the Japanese in various sporadic campaigns which are recorded as ‘Hundred- Regiment Campaigns’ in Chinese history. It was amidst these campaigns that he married Zhuo Lin, one of his comrades.   Deng during all these years seems to be a mere foot soldier of the CPC, however, rose to prominence during the War of Liberation after the withdrawal of the Japanese from China. In one of the famous battles in September 1945, Deng-Liu defeated the 13 divisions of Yan Xishan.  A heavy blow to the KMT was dealt in June 1947 when Liu-Deng armies crossed Yellow River to enter Shandong and routed 56,000 enemy forces thus paving the way for CPC’s advance to the south. The much bigger campaign was Huai-Hai Campaigns that started in September 1948 and lasted over two months. Gradually the KMT was routed from China, when Mao proclaimed the establishment of New China from Tiananmen on October 1, 1949, Deng stood witness the ceremony. 

It took Deng Xiaoping more than two decades to rise to the higher echelons of the Party; in 1956 he gate crashed to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau, was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee and shared the stage Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun etc. stalwarts. This was the period when China declared that the ‘restoration period’ of the national economy was over, and that the ‘socialist transformation’ of agriculture, cottage industries and industry and commerce was complete; indicating that China was tightening the stranglehold of state ownership. The First Five Year Plan (1951-56)   saw the GDP growing by over 10%, and the CPC, especially Mao started to become impatient for quicker results. ‘Catch up with Great Britain, surpass USA’ caught imagination of the entire CPC leadership and the time scale to achieve this was reduced from 75 to 8 years. Fearing aggressive attack on the CPC leadership, Mao kicked off an “anti-rightist” campaign (1957-58) across China. Deng being the Party boss was at the centre of these campaigns, supervised these and sent people voicing decent to labor camps in the countryside. Deng argued that many in the party possessed ‘bourgeois individualism to a serious degree, and were zealously craving for personal enjoyment.’ Mao’s impatience for better and quicker results resulted into even bigger and disastrous campaign called ‘The Great Leap Forward (1958-60). ‘Backyard blast furnaces’ and ‘people’s communes’ that were set up across China proved catastrophic and a human made famine was in the offing. Deng himself investigated the causes of human made calamity and concluded that mistakes should be rectified, especially ‘everyone sharing the big pot’ a reference to commune canteens amidst collectivization need to be rectified. He pointed out that ‘relations of production should be one that is acceptable to the masses.’  Not only this, he must have invited the fury of the helmsman of China when he pointed out that all the people who have been wronged by the political movements should be rehabilitated. It is an irony that Deng was himself wronged during the so called ‘decade of turmoil’ in China. 

During the turmoil, Deng was twice purged, criticized and repudiated. Together with the then President of China, Liu Shaoqi, he was labelled as ‘No.2 Capitalist Roader in China.’ Even the family members were not spared, his son Deng Pufang, a student in Beijing University was mimed for life; his youngest brother lost his life. Thanks to Lin Biao’s ‘counter-revolutionary coup’ and his death in an air crash in Mongolia (1971) that he was rehabilitated at the age of 68 with Zhou Enlai’s help. Zhou’s ill health also made him to take the portfolios of Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission and Chief of the General Staff of the PLA in 1975. However, his open confrontation with Mao’s wife Jiang Qing and her cohorts [Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan] known as the ‘Gang of Four’ and an open criticism of mistakes committed during the ‘cultural revolution’ invited the fury of Mao as well as Jiang Qing, and Deng was purged for the second time. The gang accused him of being ‘behind-the scenes instigator of the Tiananmen Incident of April 5, 1976’ in which people had swarmed the square out of their love for Zhou Enlai. A few months later on 9 September 1976, the helmsman of China breathed his last. Departure of Mao from the Chinese political scene witnessed an intense power struggle. Jiang Qing and her cohorts conspired to usurp power and assassinate the Politburo members including Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying. The latter with Deng’s supporters in the PLA, in a swift move on 6 October arrested the gang. The four were stripped of their party positions and levelled as conspirators and counterrevolutionaries. In July 1977, at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee, Deng was rehabilitated and reinstated to all the posts.

The ‘ten year’s turmoil’ drove home the truth that the ‘ultra left thinking’ has driven China down to a disastrous path, and that Mao’s policy were not sacrosanct. Deng who had been wronged by such policies understood the fallacy of these better than anyone else in CPC. In the third plenary session of the CPC, Deng in his speech called upon ‘participants to ‘emancipate their minds and seek truth from facts.’ ‘Class struggle’ paved way to nation building and socialist modernization albeit ‘Four Cardinal Principles’ (keeping to the socialist road and upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat, Communist Party leadership, Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought) were retained. Though the ‘cultural revolution’ was condemned but Mao’s contributions was lauded and mistakes rendered secondary. The ‘communes’ and ‘public canteens’ were shut down and land redistributed to farmers on 15 year’s lease. Subsequently, Deng invented terms such as socialism with Chinese characteristics, and contrary to Mao’s wishful thinking of realizing socialist modernization within 8-15 years, Deng pronounced in 1982 that China was at the ‘primary stage of socialism.’ If Mao advocated ‘politics in command’, Deng advocated ‘economy in command.’ 

In 1991 when I visited China for the first time, I could witness a total but gradual transformation of Mao era planned economy to Deng's socialist market economy. Under Deng’s guidance, China initiated reforms in three stages. During the first stage (between 1978 and early 1980s), rural reforms were initiated that involved the de-collectivization of agriculture, the opening up of the country to foreign investment, and allowing the entrepreneurs to establish private business. During the second stage (between mid 1980s and 1990s) China initiated privatization of the state owned enterprises and liberalization of the prices, and the decentralization of state control. During the third stage (between early 1990s and mid 2000) large scale privatization got intensified, most of the state enterprises, except a few large monopolies, such as banking, oil and telecom sectors were liquidated and their assets sold to private investors. Deng initially experimented with the model in a few Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and then gradually replicated them to the other parts of the country. During first phase of the economic reforms, when China carried out agricultural reforms, it simultaneously established four SEZs in the form of Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen, and Shantou for foreign investment that were relatively free of the bureaucratic regulations and government intervention.  Once these regions became engines of growth, China created Pudong in Shanghai and Hainan province as two more SEZs in 1990.

This does not mean that Deng forsook the long term policy goals for China; he realistically defined ambitious goals for China’s modernization during the 13^th national Congress of the CPC held in 1987. A three-stage modernization formula for the next 62 years was advocated as: Doubling the 1980 GDP to end shortages of food and clothing; quadrupling the 1980 GDP by the end of 20^th century and achieving a relatively comfortable life for all the people; and basically completing China’s modernization by mid 21^st century, raising the per capita GDP to that of moderately developed countries.  The strategy required that political structure must conform to the requirements of economic reforms, as a result functions of the Party and the government were separated and power delegated to lower levels.

Deng who had just initiated the large scale reforms in the urban areas, witnessed the fury of thousands of angry protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The protesters shouted slogans against the autocratic government, and corruption. Protesters swelled and frightened the government to declare the protesters as ‘counter revolutionary’ wanting ‘total westernization of China.’ Deng being the Chairman of the Central Military Commission called in the army and cleared the square on June 4 1989 by killing many. This is perhaps the only incident that the party is too scared to talk about, forget about reevaluating the event and the role Deng and other played in it. Tiananmen apart, Deng has been lauded for his innovative ‘one country, two systems’ policy as regards Hong Kong and Macao questions, and their subsequent return to China in 1997 and 1999 respectively. He was hopeful that the approach would also bring Taiwan to the folds of mainland China, albeit the question is more complex. Not only this, Deng’s ‘one country and two systems’ found its reverberations in Dharamsala too, as the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan émigré in India and elsewhere viewed it as a possible solution to the Tibetan problem. To everyone’s surprise, in 1979, Deng invited the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, Gyalo Dhundup for talks in Beijing. Deng told Gyalo that apart from the issue of total independence, all other issues could be discussed and resolved. Deng even permitted fact-finding missions to Tibet from Dharamsala, and a more flexible policy for Tibet was initiated. 

Deng's foreign policy was in sync with his policy of reforms and open door. Upon resuming leadership, he restored ties with Japan, consolidated China’s relations with the US and traveled to many Southeast Asian countries, so as China could replicate their economic development. His famous ‘24 character’ guideline – ‘observe calmly, secure our position; cope with our affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership’ guided China’s foreign policy under three generations of leadership. However, it appears that of late, the Chinese leadership has brought into play second unstated part of the allegorical saying ‘hide our capacities and bide our time, and make a difference.’ Had Deng being alive, he may still have hold to his version and declared the CPC leadership of being impatient for success, as was the case with Mao during the 1950s. His guidelines were applicable to any thorny issue China was facing. On Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute, he had pointed out in 1978 that ‘it would be wise to shelve the issue if both sides fail to reach an agreement.’ A year later he proposed that China was willing to put aside the issue and seek common development of the resources in the vicinity of the island without referring to the sovereignty. The argument has been extended to the South China Sea as well but has not gone well with the disputed partied.

As regards India’s border dispute with China, Deng was hopeful of settling the issues peacefully. In 1982 while receiving a delegation from the Indian Council of Social Science Research led by G. Parthasarthi, he reiterated his “package deal” for the resolution of boundary issue. He told the delegation that when he met Vajpayee in 1979, he proposed to him the same and that ‘a little compromise from both the sides will solve the problem... if it cannot be solved immediately, we can put it aside....’ A few years later on December 21, 1988, 84 years old Deng had a historic 90 minutes long meeting with Rajiv Gandhi. Clasping Rajiv Gandhi’s hands for pretty long time he told the Indian Prime Minister that ‘let us forget the past and do everything with an eye on the future.’ The real ‘Century of Asia Pacific’ cannot have said arrived until India and China along with other developing countries in this region is not developed.  In 1992, in order to give another push to the reforms, he visited SEZs in south China and called for creating Chinese brands. Sincethen we have seen the emergence of Lenevo, Huawei, Haier, ZTE and many other brands in the international market. In 1996, the man who transformed China breathed his last ending his long March in the Chinese politics.

In conclusion, we see a versatile, authoritarian yet flexible personality in Deng Xiaoping, the person who salvaged China out of ‘movements’ that were full of political intrigues, internecine strife and purges. The ‘revisionists’ like Deng who were purged for ‘not raising the banner of Mao Zedong thought’ emerged paramount in post Mao China and replaced Mao’s thought with his own ‘theory.’ His demise did not witness any internecine political struggle and disruptions as Mao’s demise saw. The policies left by Deng were clearly future oriented and not as dysfunctional as during Mao’s time. One may say that if Mao was successful in turning China powerful (qiang), Deng Xiaoping succeeded in showing China how to acquire wealth (fu); the construct of fuqiang or a Chinese dream continues and it has to be seen how the fifth generation of Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping shapes this dream!